6.7K Romney urges Trump to support Paris climate deal 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Wednesday expressed his support for the U.S. to remain in the Paris climate accord, arguing it was an opportunity to remain a leader on the world stage. “Affirmation of the Paris Agreement is not only about the climate: It is also about America being the global leader,” Romney tweeted.

Billionaire financier George Soros said Thursday the European Union is in an "existential crisis" and needs to be reinvented in the face of growing threats. "The reinvention would have to revive the support that the European Union used to enjoy," the Hungarian-born Soros said at the Brussels Economic Forum. Such reinvention would have to review the past and explain to European citizens what went wrong and then make proposals to make things right. Soros welcomed a German idea to cut European funds aimed at reducing income inequalities at the regional level for those countries disrespecting the rule of law. Both...

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said he hoped US President Donald Trump would not rush into deciding what to do with the Paris climate agreement. “My wish is that the United States takes no hurried decision,” Macron told a news briefing after talks with Trump, in which the two leaders discussed Washington’s doubts over the 196-nation climate pact reached in late 2015. “I told the US president the importance of the deal for us, the importance of the commitment made by the international community,” he said. …

Former President Barack Obama is traveling to Italy, where he will speak this week about food security and climate change. The former president is expected to go to Milan to meet with several Italians and discuss the issues. On Monday, the former president is scheduled to meet with former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. That evening, he will attend a private dinner held by the Institute for International Political Studies. Obama on Tuesday is expected to give a keynote address to the Seeds and Chips Global Food Innovation Summit. The theme of the summit this year is "The Impact of Technology...

(CNSNews.com) - White House Science Advisor John Holdren says because of the impacts of climate change, agricultural and construction workers “will basically be unable to control their body temperature and will die.” “In some parts of the world, when you look more broadly at this question, you see the likelihood that in the hottest times of the year it will be simply physiologically impossible to work outdoors,” Holdren said at a White House event on climate change Monday. “That means agriculture, that means construction, people who try to work outdoors will basically be unable to control their body temperature and...

American taxpayers will once again be liable for more than one-fifth of the United Nations' regular budget next year, as well as more than one-quarter of the much-larger peacekeeping budget - a total of approximately $2,957,000,000. The U.N. General Assembly just before Christmas approved a regular operating budget of $5.4 billion for the 2016-17 period. (That budget is calculated biannually.) Of the $2.7 billion earmarked for 2016, the U.S. will account for 22 percent, or $594 million. Of the separate peacekeeping budget - $8.27 billion for the year ending June 30 - the U.S. is liable for 28.5783 percent, or...

(CNSNews.com) - At news conference in Paris on Tuesday, President Obama said "the most elegant way" to reduce carbon emissions is "to put a price on it." He was responding to a reporter who asked Obama, "I wonder if you see any political path back home toward putting a price on carbon?" "I have long believed that the most elegant way to drive innovation and to reduce carbon emissions is to put a price on it. This is a classic market failure," Obama replied. "If you open up an Econ 101 textbook, it will say the market's very good about...

(CNN)—NASA's rockets are astounding machines, capable of blasting into space at thousands of miles per hour and withstanding temperatures twice the melting point of steel. But they can't take off underwater. Rising sea levels caused by melting ice caps threaten to disrupt a handful of NASA launch sites along U.S. coastlines, the space agency warns. In the coming years, launch facilities at Florida's Kennedy Space Center and other places may need to be retrofitted or even moved inland, NASA says. "Every NASA center has its own set of vulnerabilities, and some are more at risk than others," NASA climatologist...

The European carbon credit program, developed in conjunction with the United Nations, is working out just fabulously. Wellâ€¦ itâ€™s at least working out fabulously for a few people. Similar to programs being developed here in the United States by climate warriors, it offers â€śflexibilityâ€ť to various countries so it can be tailored to their individual needs. For example, if you are able to make big cuts in your carbon emissions, you get a lot of these â€ścreditsâ€ť applied to you. If there are other countries who are a bit fatter with cash but canâ€™t manage the changes required to...

History has shown that when a government wants to solidify its power, it has to turn its subjects into taxpayers. The Roman Empire demanded high tribute payments from every tribe it had newly conquered. And the United States developed from a commonwealth to a federal state when, in the 18th century, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton achieved uniform duties and taxes for the entire union, initially on whiskey, because it was so lucrative. Politicians in the eurozone are now seeking to emulate the historic model from the early years of the United States. The unnerving bargaining over the latest Greece bailout...

German and French politicians are calling for a quantum leap in how the EU’s single currency is run, proposing an embryo eurozone treasury equipped with a eurozone finance chief, single budget, tax-raising powers, pooled debt liabilities, a common monetary fund, and separate organization and representation within the European parliament. They also propose that all teenagers in the EU be given the chance to spend a subsidized six months in another European country. In an article published in the Guardian and other European newspapers, Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s social democratic leader and vice-chancellor in Angela Merkel’s coalition government, and Emmanuel Macron, France’s...

London could lose more than a million jobs if Britain quits the EU and fails to adopt more outward-looking trade policies, according to a report commissioned by Boris Johnson, the London mayor. In those circumstances, the capital could shed 1.2m jobs and lose out on tens of billions of pounds of gross domestic product, the report says.

The European Court of Justice on Wednesday (30 April) rejected a UK legal challenge to plans by eleven countries to set up a financial transactions tax (FTT). The main thrust of London’s opposition to the tax relates to the so-called “residence” and “issuance” principle in the proposed bill, which means that some traders operating outside the FTT-11 would still be liable to pay the levy. The UK, which has the largest financial services sector in the EU, says that it would be hit by the tax as a result. But since the proposal has not been agreed, the UK case...

Preface: The scientific method requires allowing a free-for-all of hypotheses, which then rise or fall based upon the results of actual experiments. In other words, science means that you throw out theories - no matter how good they look on paper - that are disproven by experimental results, and adopt those confirmed by the results. [Economics is supposed to do that, too ... but hasn't.]For example, putting Galileo to death because he didn’t agree with the “accepted” consensus that the Sun revolved around the Earth was not a great example of the scientific method. Instead of conducting experiments to see...

IMF paper warns of 'savings tax' and mass write-offs as West's debt hits 200-year high ... Debt burdens in developed nations have become extreme by any historical measure and will require a wave of haircuts, warns IMF paper. The paper said policy elites in the West are still clinging to the illusion that rich countries can chip away at their debts with a blend of austerity cuts and growth. â€“ UK Telegraph Dominant Social Theme: The West is out of control and only taxes can save it. Free-Market Analysis: The UK Telegraph has discovered that the IMF wants to inflict...

The French National Assembly’s finance committee has green-lighted an amendment to the country’s draft 2014 budget law, significantly increasing the amount of aid funds that can be generated from the upcoming financial transactions tax (FTT), EurActiv.fr reports. An unexpected proposal for taxing financial transactions—amendment 23—was adopted on Tuesday (15 October) by the French Parliament’s finance committee during its examination of the country’s draft budget law for next year. … But the proposal is viewed less positively by the French Finance Ministry, which wants to protect the interests of French banks. Financial market operators, such as NYSE Euronext and Paris Europlace,...

A financial transactions tax (FTT) for 11 EU countries would be illegal as it affects the tax sovereignty of others, according to an opinion by the legal service of the EU Council in Brussels. The European Commission says the tax is in line with EU law, however. In the leaked document, seen by Reuters and Financial Times, the lawyers serving EU member states say the proposed financial transactions tax “exceeds member states’ jurisdiction for taxation under the norms of international customary law as they are understood by the Union.” The 14-page legal opinion concludes that the proposal is “not compatible”...

EU tax commissioner Algirdas Semeta has cast doubt on reports that his Financial Transactions Tax (FTT), also known as the Tobin Tax, is being unraveled by member states. The Reuters news agency and the Wall Street Journal this week cited “senior EU officials” as saying some of the 11 countries set to take part are having second thoughts. Semeta’s original proposal envisaged a 0.1 percent tax on share and bond trades and a 0.01 percent levy on derivatives trading from 1 January, designed to take €35 billion ($45 billion) out of the pockets of banks and traders into national treasuries....

France’s experiment with the Tobin Tax has proved a spectacular flop. Its finance ministry admits that the scattershot levy on financial transactions has raised just a third of the money expected since August. Total takings will be a paltry €800 million ($1.04 billion) in 2013, but that overlooks the much greater damage inflicted on French finance, industry and the government’s own tax base. “France is shooting itself in the foot,” said Paul-Henri de La Porte du Theil, head of French finance industry AFG. … The House of Lords EU Committee says the Tobin Tax will have “far-reaching adverse consequences” for...